Did my 2nd & 3rd interview, now I wait

Just did my 2nd and 3rd interview today for a part-time, no benefits (including no health care), graveyard-shift care center job, today. I was in IT for more than 20 years, handled all sorts of high level systems for big companies. And now I'm reduced to begging for a job cleaning up after people who can't go to the bathroom in the right place, for just above minimum wage, in a junky part time shift.

I'm not disrepecting the people who need the personal care, or the people who have normally always done that kind of work. I'm really not. I'm just still shell-shocked, I guess. I still can't believe that everything I worked for in training myself and building reliable system and earning good money and respect is just all gone. And now I'm down to this as the closest I've come so far to being hired for anything?

If I do get hired, and if I can never expect to get another job in the field I've always worked in, then I will gain some new skills. And maybe that will at least keep me employed, though at wages I can barely eat at, in my current city.

I'm just... stunned (still).

I can sympathize.

I hear ya, I'm there too...
I went to school and educated myself to get that good job I had, just so I could get out of retail and away form the public...
and now, I'm right back in it - a week and a half, and I hate already. I leave there every day saying to myself how much I hate it, I wake up and am saying I hate it. But I put on the smile and pretend.
This really sucks!
I look everyday for something else. Can't EVEN hope for something in my field. Right now, it's for anything within 20 miles that won't suck up all my gas to get there, like this "new" job. I must have put in $75 worth of gas already. Not to mention the $1.50/day in tolls just to get there. And I won't get my first check until April 8th. I was happy I got SOMETHING, but now....not so much...

I wish you luck, in hanging in there.

Yep. I went back to school three times. Now I'm 55 and there's just not enough of my working life left to do it again.

I'm going to choke the &$%#! out of the next $%&# who says "Americans just aren't educated enough for today's jobs."

I think they use that excuse as a cop-out! Its easier to blame us than themselves. (the government/congress/WH) We certainly didn't create this mess.